Japan: Discerning the Hand of God in Tragedy

Acts of God by Amy Nelson

The recent events in Japan have been absolutely horrific. Hundreds and thousands of people are suffering, having lost loved ones and homes, their future bleak with uncertainty. Sitting in the comfort and relative security of my own home, it is so hard to connect with such carnage. The pictures come across the computer screen and television, almost like foreign invaders. Foreign to my thinking because I've never suffered such a horrid turn of events. And, it is even more terrifying to think that this all happened, literally, in a matter of seconds, to people just like me.


Given that it's been a whole week now since all this transpired, I was somewhat encouraged by the lack of religious idiocy surrounding this event. It seemed almost immediately after the Haiti quake, that claimed over two hundred thousand lives, that Pat Robertson was basking in free publicity after announcing the ludicrous notion that the quake was God getting back at Haiti because of voodoo and other things that offended Robertson's religious sensibilities. I remember hearing this and hanging my head in shame, being embarrassed that someone who claimed to represent my faith to the world would utter such unconscionable words in the name of Christ.


Unfortunately, this tendency could not be kept at bay forever. I woke this morning to read several articles speaking about the the comments made by the Governor of Tokyo. He stated that the quake and subsequent events were a result of divine retribution, enacted  because of Japanese greed. I was really hoping against hope that we could table the question of theodicy this time around. Maybe, just this one time, we could abstain from trying to put God's stamp of approval upon it, and choose not to discuss divine complicity with yet another  global atrocity. Obviously, this has not happened. And, to my surprise, this ill-considered rhetoric has come from someone within the crisis itself, which is somewhat unique. It's really easy to sit outside the tragedy and pontificate and speculate, but it seems somewhat unusual, to me, that this question has arisen from someone inside the crisis.


The fact is, our Christian faith and how we present God to the world, kind of generates and perpetuates these kinds of discussions. And in so doing, this logic has become so ingrained in our thinking that it is virtually impossible to ignore. I mean, anytime something like an earthquake or bad storm occurs, we automatically call it an "act of God." It is a term with legal standing as well. So, even within a secular context, the assumption that God has something to do with these horrible tragedies is a foregone conclusion.